Sub menu

AMEX Gift Cards BigCrumbs Strategy – Free Money and Points

Follow me on Facebook or Twitter or subscribe via email below to never miss out on a deal!

Update 10/29/13 – Ensure you use a credit card that doesn’t add cash advance fees (see below). I’ve tested and confirmed that Barclaycard Arrival does not charge a CA fee.

Right now BigCrumbs is offering 2% cash back for American Express personal gift cards. I really like BigCrumbs because they have always been consistent and my success rate has been 100%. Although Topcashback has had higher cash back rates, I would always choose BigCrumbs over TCB because of its consistency. A 2% cash back for AMEX gift cards may not sound like a lot, but it can easily add up when you make a big purchase with the right credit card. Here is my AMEX gift cards BigCrumbs strategy to earn free money and points.

The largest personal gift card you can order is $3,000.Which credit card should you use? Almost any credit card you use will initiate a fraud alert and be denied. From my experience, business credit cards go through easier. I’ve ordered a $3K gift card with my AMEX SPG Business card without triggering any alerts. However, I would try to avoid AMEX credit cards because they could trigger a financial review. I’ve done $3K with no problem, but I would like to keep my big spending on AMEX at a minimum. Also, I would avoid Chase credit cards because there are reports of Chase charging a $150 cash advance fee. Seems like Chase cards are getting cash advance charges and AMEX cards are not. Barclaycard Arrival also reported not to get a cash advance according to Flyertalk

To get the best value, I would stick with the best non-category bonus spending credit cards. I used the Barclaycard Arrival World Mastercard to make the purchase. It instantly was denied, so I went to my Barclaycard login and was alerted of the purchase. I approved the purchase, and went back into AMEX gift cards to make the purchase again. It was then approved.

A $3,000 AMEX gift card will have a $3.95 fee. Shipping is $8.95, but you can sign up for free shipping for 3 months. According to the terms and conditions, you can cancel the shipping within 3 months by calling 1-877-297-4438.

AMEX $3K gift card free shipping and $3.95 fee.

To calculate the free cash back and points from this purchase, I would take the cash back and credit card points minus the fees.

$60 Cashback from Big Crumbs

$3003.95 @ 2.2X from Barclaycard Arrival = 6,668 points or $66.68

Minus $3.95 fee.

Total Profit = $60 + $66.68 – $3.95 = $122.73 profit!

The next step is to liquidate the $3K AMEX gift card. There are different methods to do this, but here are some tips:

Use the Amazon Payments 3-person method to liquidate $1,000 a month.

Buy Vanilla Reload Cards at CVS

Everyday Spend

Kiva short-term loans to get the money back within 5-6 months.

Load the Target AMEX Prepaid gift card and cash out at a local ATM for a small fee.

BigCrumbs 2% Cash Back Posted in 24 hours!

My method of choice is Amazon Payments because there are no fees. If you get your AMEX gift card now, you can send $1K end of October and another $1K at the beginning of November. You will barely have to float any funds in that case. That’s some gift card churning at its finest right there. Even if you buy Vanilla Reloads, you will still come out ahead by a good amount. That is basically my AMEX gift cards Bigcrumbs strategy to earn free money and points. If anybody has some other strategies or methods, please post below.

Help support the site and sign up for the best credit card deals at the Credit Card Deals page.Thanks for your support!

With ALL new cards, call up to state you want to buy $X,XXX in gift cards for family and ask to have it unblocked.
AMEX gift cards in grocery stores can only be loaded up to $500 and they cost more than $3.95. Any gift card for which no PIN can be obtained is of no value to me for recycling funds to pay off the credit cards. Same for Meta Bank and US Bank gift cards which work fine.

Keep in mind, there is still an opportunity cost by liquidating through AP. Specifically, you give up the opportunity to earn 1,000 points/miles by using AP on a mileage earning card. Do be fair, you need to include the cost of liquidating the Amex Gift cards. This reduces your profit.

Sorry, I’m not sure what you mean. I’m getting the points from my credit card from buying the AMEX gift card. I’m getting points and cash back at the same time. I didn’t calculate the cost of liquidation, but Amazon Payments would be $0 cost and Vanilla reloads would be 3.95 per 500.

You can buy a 3k amex gift card and get 3k miles and liquidate via AP, or you can just charge 3k via AP and get 3k miles even without the gift card so you really can’t count the $66.68 you get from arrival as you “could” get this just by charging 3k via AP in your arrival card. The net benefit is only $56.05 and NOT the $122 you claim.

Rom–you might want to reformat the list of cards. I think you mean to start a new category with “recently shown as…” but it shows up on the same line as CapOne so it looks like all the cards on the list including AmEx and Arrival are cards that charge cash advances.

Since BC hasn’t begun paying out since they brought back Amex, nobody is sure if >$500 cards will pay. Granted they don’t have any fine print disallowing them, but we have zero recourse if they try and screw us (and it’s not an insignificant sum for those of us who have done >$20k in GCs!)

I see you cut and pasted from the FT wiki. If you are going to do that, why remove the information about the 2 deep referral payout? If the goal is to educate your readers on optimal strategy, I don’t see how the 2 deep referral angle can be ignored. We are not talking about a one time $5 or $10 for referring someone, but rather a lifetime payout on all purchases, currently 0.0175% x 2 = 0.35% (but has been as high as 0.5%). That’s a lot to give up.

Has anyone tried using a USbank Card? Chase dinged me with a 3% fee on my first purchase awhile back and while they wouldn’t remove the fee they gave me 5,000 UA miles. I also have had duccess cashing these out at CVS for VRs and OneVanilla’s and at other locations. This works better with “trained” cashiers, once I work with alot. It also seems to work better when I split a transaction between two cards. Cashier checks ID and card number for the first and then you swipe the AMEX for $3000 and they don’t seem to pay to much attention to the second swipe. Last question how many of these a month are people getting. I got a $3k and then AMEX’s site was declining my last two attemtps, had to use my wife’s card to get a second one. Definetly being denied on AMEX’s side as my cards all say they aren’t blocking. Customer service at AMEX can’t tell me why, I have them digging for a specific reason. I was a little surprised that after one purchase they would be immediately blocking a second a week later.

I do not believe so. Amex does not operate on a PIN system at all, only signatures. This is the reason why their prepaid cards do not need to have an option to set a PIN by law, unlike mastercard and visa.

Do you know what the limits are on these bad boys? Like, if I go through TCB or Big Crumbs, can I only earn so much cash back before they will not award anymore? Is there some kind of monthly limit. I swear I’ve read somewhere that there is, but I can’t find it anywhere! Thanks!